The Furious Five: Paul Lang

IGN64.com has compiled five set questions that will be thrown into a new developer's direction every two weeks. But this isn't your run-of-the-mill Q&A session, these are the questions that make a company's public relations department cringe and give developers the chance to bring the "off the record" back on it.

The questions will remain the same, but you can bet that the answers will be significantly different.

This time, we spoke with Lobotomy Software's Paul Lang, project leader for the upcoming Crave title Caesar's Palace....after he beat us silly in a Death Tank match.

Furious

1. Cartridges or CDs? Why?

Paul: Generally, we prefer CDs because of the storage space, but cartridges are pretty cool because kids can slide them across the floor and not cause any problems. The instant loading is great, too. But it really comes down to the business model, what's most attractive to a publisher.

2. What does Nintendo 64 need to compete with the "next generation" of consoles? Supposing Nintendo were to consult you on its next project, what would you suggest the company do differently?

Paul: One of the things we would want is a development environment that's not designed for hackers, that's designed for engineers. We would want to make use of the power of the system efficiently, whereas tools that have been available, historically, don't do that. Since cartridges are expensive, so we would like to have a less expensive alternative to that. The N64 does have a very small texture cache, so that's also an issue, but it's something that you can work around with creative engineering. No matter what, I'm sure we'll have the graphics performance ¿ everybody focuses on the graphics ¿ but hopefully they will invest in the sound as well. We've also heard a lot about the microcode and that it makes things more efficient. Maybe having that available to developers would have made a big difference in taking advantage of what the system can do.

3. What do you think are some of the untapped resources, or underused features of Nintendo 64's hardware?

Paul

: Some of the premier developers are pushing the hardware pretty hard and I think are realizing that the chipset can do multi-threading and things like that, that we're taking advantage of. Also: Better textures. Some people fall back and get too lazy with the different texture modes . We can do wonderful radiosity lighting and such with the texture combining modes, that I don't hardly anybody ever uses.

4. What kind of games does Nintendo 64 need most? On the same note, what genres have been over-exploited on the console?

Paul

: It seems that there are a lot of racing games. RPGs obviously have been lacking, but with Zelda coming out, it's going to fill that hole a little bit. Obviously, Caesars Palace is its own little niche thing ¿ if I can put in a little plug for that.

5. If you could be trapped inside any N64 game, what title would it be and why?

Paul

: I'd have to say Zelda. It's a larger environment, and if I had to be trapped in a game, at least I would want a larger environment to run around in and a variety of characters to interact with.